I actually did use a fork once to discourage my old kitteh, whose idea of fun was to try to smother me with his belly at night. I didn’t poke him with it; I just made sure that every time he tried to sit down, it was where he wanted to sit. Brilliant! My strategy was working! But – he didn’t stop. That was when I realized I had made the second great blunder in military strategy. You know blunder #1 “never get in a land war in asia”? Well I’d fallen into blunder #2 “never get in a battle of passive/aggressive with a cat.”

Hi everyone! I have a somewhat OT comment, but the title of this post and the seriousness of the situation make me feel like this would be a good place to share a bit of news that is not getting much attention at all, yet has dire ecological consequences for a huge number of unique and endangered species. In short: in Madagascar, there is currently a truly biblical plague of locusts that is swarming, covering over half of the island and destroying the rice crop that 60% of the human inhabitants of the island depends on for sustenance. The FAO estimates that 41 million USD would be sufficient to end the scourge, but that will only be if action is swift – before June. Because of international approbation after a 2009 coup, international organizations have suspended aid, and we may miss the window to ameliorate the effects. Aside from the 12.5+ Million people that will shortly be experiencing famine and food insecurity, it’s almost certain that the locust will do inestimable damage to the fragile and already besieged endemic ecosystems. Madagascar has a ~85% endemicity level, and the myriad diverse biota that inhabit it include species like the Traveller’s Palm, over half of the world’s chameleon species, and the entirety of the infraorder Lemuriformes – about 103 species of primate found nowhere else, of which 91% are on the IUCN red list. I don’t know what precisely can be done about any of this from a practical level, as it involves international aid flowing to a previously pariah country, but it has gotten next to no coverage in the American Media, and I feel that this is a story that urgently needs attention. Link to UN for the story: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44493&Cr=agriculture&Cr1#.UViS86t4a5L

More details upon request – I can talk for hours about this (lemur anthropologist here), but I don’t want to derail the thread by any means.

Cats? Annoying? How can relatively independent-minded animals like cats be annoying?
Apparently you haven’t met my son’s or in-laws’ dogs–following you around like that little mutt in the old ‘Loonie Tunes/Merry Melodies’ cartoons, always under your feet, having to be waited on hand and foot (or paw), standing there looking at you with that dopey Creationist stare after you let them out to ‘do their business’, hopping on your leg and slobbering all over–THEY are annoying.

It’s a somewhat difficult but really rewarding place to work. The central government has become really unable to deal with enforcement of statutes in the rural areas after the 2009 Malagasy political crisis, and so unsustainable logging of rosewoods and other long-growth hardwoods has apparently been taking a large toll on areas of the E-NE coast. A lot of this has been related to me anecdotally, and people who work within Madagascar don’t talk about it in-country for obvious reasons.
TL;DR I think a thread would be a capital idea. Thanks for passing it along! :)